The Celery (Apium graveolens L.)
Project
The aim of this project is to develop
disease resistant varieties adapted to California.
The main disease present in the state is fusarium yellows, caused by Fusarium
oxysporum fs apicola race 2. Our program has released many resistant lines
to breeders, such as UC1, UC8, UC10 and UC26 among others. These lines have
served seed companies to develop most of the existing Fusarium resistant
varieties. In 1994 we released the fusarium resistant variety `Promise', which
is now available. The source of resistance to fusarium derives from celeriac,
another form of cultivated A. graveolens .
Other aims of the project are to
develop late blight and celery mosaic virus (CeMV) resistant varieties. For this purpose we
are using wild species as sources of these traits.
In order to have an efficient
breeding program, basic research aimed to the development and use of molecular
markers in breeding is also in place. We have constructed DNA-based marker
linkage map for this crop covering most of its
chromosomes (see Yang and Quiros 1995, Genome 38:36-44).
We have found a couple of molecular
markers linked to CeMV allowing us to do marker assisted selection for this
trait.
Celery research is supported by
the California
Celery Research Advisory Board
